hard-pressed

Infinitive complement

• find: You'll be hard-pressed to find a sweeter sounding trio.
• remember: But none stand out, and I am hard-pressed to remember any.
• tell: Tho, thanks to the talent involved, viewers would be hard-pressed to tell the difference.
• maintain: But Rollins will be hard-pressed to maintain Dell's winning streak as the company continues to diversify its business.
• choose: I'm hard-pressed to choose between RTS and RPG, so I'll just go for both.
• think: I am hard-pressed to think of other similar examples.

Modifies a noun

• taxpayer: There you are, I've just saved us hard-pressed taxpayers £ 250 000 at a stroke.
• farmer: Despite offering hard-pressed farmers typically £ 10,000 per pylon, NG were forced to seek compulsory powers in 93 cases.
• budget: This is unusual in e-book packages but means enormous savings for hard-pressed library budgets.
• staff: The second was that the use of group project work brought only limited relief to hard-pressed staff.
• teacher: Finally, who can give realistic advice to hard-pressed teachers on how to actually prepare an ILP?
• family: We will give a helping hand to hard-pressed families who are being punished at the pump.

Modifying Another Word

• already: This drop in sales causes already hard-pressed industry to suffer a drop in sales, with resultant lay-offs, redundancies and business failures.
• financially: Finally, financially hard-pressed school districts might get such services free from a nearby Linux User Group.
• very: That is giving a genuine degree of hope to the very hard-pressed farming community in our country.
• too: But most are too hard-pressed by the relentless demands of planning casework to be free to plan for these other issues.

Used with adjective complement

• feel: But when firm proposals came back, some churches had reservations, not least that they felt too hard-pressed to make a financial commitment.